


pour away the ocean

by dovahfiin



Series: the stars are not wanted now [2]
Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: AU, Alternative Universe - Rogue One, Emotional Manipulation, Friendship/Love, Homoeroticism, Jynnic Fandom Challenge, Love/Hate, True Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-05
Updated: 2017-06-06
Packaged: 2018-11-09 11:32:28
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 3,889
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11103705
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dovahfiin/pseuds/dovahfiin
Summary: Crashing waves drown out their protestations.





	1. wrapping around her spine

**Author's Note:**

> My friend Robert wanted more Jyn and Orson, so that's what he'll get. An expansion on their vignette from pack up the moon and dismantle the sun. AU af.
> 
> I don't own Star Wars. F*ck off.
> 
> This took on a lot of understated things that kind of surprised me. I don't have a beta so I sort of run amok, and I think it turned out well here.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Krennic summons Jyn to his villa one month before she graduates from Royal Imperial. A tacit understanding is struck.

He holds the flimsiplast in dry, cracked hands. He sees a name amid a sea of too many consonants, all people just like him clamoring to Royal Imperial for a piece of ambition thrown from the table that is the Imperial Palace. He sees a name of someone who doesn't have to fight as hard to win not just scraps but even a place at the table.

When he summons her to the villa, it is ostensibly to discuss her career path. Weapons development, namely the use of kyber - just like Galen. He tastes bile when his mind rolls the name over, silently tasting its hard consonant followed by the softness his lips land on at the end. Jyn's name begins and ends the same way, but somehow its utterance and thought illicit a different kind of reaction - a reaction he would do well to deny.

She comes to the eastern coast of Coruscant in her crisp uniform, her hair pulled back into an impossible bun, the cadet pips perfectly squared against her breast. The minute swell of a young body is not noticeable beyond the sharpness of the jodhpurs she wears; he cannot tell where her duty to her Empire ends and her hips begin.

He chooses a loose-fitting tunic in ivory, gray pants tucked into high black boots. He wears no sidearm and no rank insignia. Outside on the veranda, he sits on a chaise only half-reading an actual book - a rarity, especially on Coruscant.

A high-matte service droid announces Jyn's arrival.

"Send her out", he mumbles into the pages.

And then she's there, standing right in front of him, one standard month away from graduation. She has been made Cadet Commander; her new rank is a beautiful labradorite against a silver plaque.

"Young Jyn. I haven't seen you since you were a child. Come, please; sit. At ease."

She hesitates, then her features soften before recognition and mirth chase themselves across her face. She settles on friendliness; companionable ease.

"Director Krennic, I --"

"Please, call me Orson. I've known your father since Brentaal a million years ago, and we're nowhere near the Imperial Center. I'm casual out here on the coast."

She surprises him with genuine laughter. "I've been knee deep in formality and process for so long. Forgive me."

He waves it off. "I confess; there was no real goal toward asking you to come out here." The servo-droid reappears and dispenses refreshment. Krennic wordlessly encourages Jyn to partake, and she does without reservation.

"I had assumed it concerned my father."

He looks out over gray, churning sea. "He requested a transfer to Eadu." Jyn actually rolls her eyes.

"His penchant for melodrama is frustrating."

"He's your father, and he's still in the throes of grief."

Even then, Krennic agrees that Galen's apparent need for solitude might have risen from a sophomoric need to pout.

"He won't even come to graduation. Not that it matters terribly", she added with the haste of someone embarrassed to feel a certain way. "I'm old enough to understand that he has unavoidable duties."

"Project Stardust is behind. He could take one more day."

Krennic is still regarding the roiling waves beyond them. The Weathernet doesn't control them, so their choppy course is an almost laughable contrast to the clear, cerulean sky above them. Gulls cry out from somewhere they can't see. Jyn takes a sip of an aged Ithorian whisky.

"Stay for a few days. I expedited a leave request. We could - I don't know, catch up."

She laughs again, though this time it is mirthless. "Are you serious? I'd be thrown out if they knew."

"What makes you think I told the truth?"

Until the suns set, they sit on the veranda and listen to the waves push against the rocks below the villa. He reads, she thinks about taking off the jodhpurs and the Empire - for a few days.


	2. she shelters him from the tumult of a make-believe war

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Pretense isn't a visitor who wears out their welcome.

The caf is hot and strong; precisely how she imagined he'd prefer it. She lets it burn her throat a bit - it wakes her up, after all, and he's still groggily shuffling through the kitchen collecting random fruit to cut up and pair with some kind of semi-sweet cream.

"You'll get used to this. Harried, half-dressed mealtimes. I had no idea Tarkin would be on-world."

She looks up at him through a veil of unruly auburn hair, complete with flyaways from having taking it out of that oppressive regulation style. "I've heard that he's. . . crusty."

This is the first time Krennic laughs in front of her, and it's delicious. A perfectly staccato baritone, gravely and suggestive and babbling. "He is that. I've never heard him described with such refreshing accuracy."

He offers for her to take the speeder into the Center with him, but she declines. When she does, he smiles apologetically and invites her to do whatever she fancies while he's away. "I didn't want to suffer with that dusty old relic alone, but I can understand why you'd want to stay here."

While he's gone, the droid is deactivated and she's given what is more or less free reign.

She sifts through his books. They threaten to disintegrate under her touch, and she can't read the language.

A quick database search confirms that they're books of history, collections of stories from a world in the Outer Rim, mostly having to do with erotic encounters between men.

So the rumors _were_ true.

He catches her sitting on the floor of his bedroom with the books, painstakingly translating passages with her datapad. He laughs again, but this time she can hear his nerves tingling with warning and caution.

"Read anything you like?"

"I'm not entirely surprised. Salacious rumor is a well-loved pastime at Royal Imperial."

"They think the Moff and I -" his voice drops off. Jyn nods.

"He comes to Coruscant whenever you're on leave, presumably to disparage you."

"I beg your pardon. Sometimes he discredits and disavows me!"

Jyn scoffs. "You're untouchable."

He offers her his hand and she rises to her feet with more grace than her cave-spelunking mother ever could have. "I am only a man."

They wander out to the veranda. Jyn can smell the salt on the air and it reminds her of Lah'mu, but the sand on the small stretch of beach below them isn't as black. She knows that the discoloration is due to some unhealthy introduction of something that isn't a naturally occurring mineral. Her father had cared about Ph balance and the thickness of soil. Coruscant was thinly veiled disease and decay - even its natural beauty had been reduced to subtle reminders of the fact that trillions lived here. Maybe more than she knew.

"This particular villa is an add-on from the first human structures on the planet. That's why the masonry is so odd. I can't trace it to a distinct style, but I'm assuming it was in the Loridi-era or somewhere thereabouts. Their ability to carve stone had improved greatly; I do like how primitive it is even still."

"Doesn't the Emperor maintain a villa, too?"

"It's farther out. He goes in between Senate sessions."

She's silent then, still thinking about the books. He reads her mind.

"I wouldn't put any stock into what you found in there. I couldn't even explain it to myself, let alone your father."

"Why would he have cared?"

"It started while we were at Brentaal. This gorgeous boy named Armitage; he was almost as brilliant as Galen."

"So he was jealous."

Krennic's eyes averted out across the sea again; the water shone a nearly perfect blue green in the sun, ripples along its face shimmering in the midmorning light. "Completely."

Lyra had known about her husband's dalliances with members of the same gender, but they had chosen traditional monogamy. He hadn't acted on those preferences since she had died; he was really no better than a Jedi.

"Did you love this Armitage?"

"After a fashion. Tarkin wants me to take a wife; thinks it would legitimize my climb in rank."

"And any spouse wouldn't do?"

His eyes rake over her, suddenly, pulling away from the freedom and listlessness of watching the dancing light fractals on the water. "No. He wants me to be strategic."

The way he looked at her wasn't predatory. He regarded her coolly, as if she were an acceptable piece of art which was just good enough to look at but not to purchase. She started to feel his intent and let the fullness of the revelation seep into her skin.

"My father will finish his project." Krennic silently nods.

"This is the only way?"

"The Governor thinks so."

They both look out, then. Jyn rests her hand on the stone leg of the chaise on which Krennic reclines, covering her soft hands with his soft hands.

"Think about it when you go back. I don't need an answer especially quickly. At least around graduation."

It's Jyn's turn to look out over a part of Coruscant so few ever see. She is worlds away, but he is right there.


	3. I have made a bed for you of moss

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He will protect her, and she will be what damns them.

Jyn marches across the parade deck, ceremonial saber drawn and held to her left shoulder in perfect alignment with her set jaw. Were he closer, Krennic could see the unyielding focus of her hazel eyes. Were he closer, it would cause him to shiver.

The Emperor himself observes this particular commencement, high above the parade deck and cloistered with Darth Vader behind transparasteel windows. The Rebellion had become a bigger problem; security was tight. Even Krennic had been subjected to a search when he had arrived for the ceremony.

Jyn accepted her commission and pinning, shining brightly like the element which had become her nickname. Tarkin nodded when it was over, raising his eyebrows in surprise.

"Her discipline will complement you quite well, Director Krennic."

He let the clamor of hundreds of other beings swallow the insult. "She is truly as brilliant as her father. She will be a great asset."

Jyn spots them and, one hand on the hilt of her saber, walks over to join them - collecting some congratulation from her peers along the way.

"Governor Tarkin, this is Lieutenant Jyn Erso." She executes a perfectly crisp salute. "At ease", he says, amused.

"It is an honor, sir. Your tactical treatises are lauded to a great degree at the Academy."

"You were posted here, correct?"

"Yes, sir."

"I shall make certain that we discuss tactics and stratagem aboard the Empire's newest. . . flagship."

"Thank you, sir."

Tarkin stares at Krennic, sizing him up, and then turns on his heel and disappears in the crowd of the Empire's newest officers and other attendees. Left to their own devices out from under his scrutiny, Jyn and Orson hesitantly move against the crowd back to his personal speeder.

"Shore leave for two weeks. I thought we'd both go to the villa."

She's been there three times since that first trip, but this will be when Jyn decides. She knows this, has felt it coming on for a while; a silent pressure she can't name, an insidious desire she doesn't want to completely deny herself. The speeder gains altitude and they are above all other air traffic, Krennic's brow stitched in concentration and concern.

"What flagship was he talking about?"

"He was reaching for another word, but that's the closest he could come without compromising the security clearance required to even utter what it actually is."

For all of the jubilant celebrations of the day, Krennic cast a pall over Jyn's own elation. Her father hadn't been there, as she had anticipated, but Tarkin's presence signaled that something big was going on. Something Krennic couldn't quite wrap his mind around. Maybe even something he didn't like.

Twilight has fallen by the time they reach the villa. Jyn starts removing her uniform in the foyer, carefully hanging the starched and pristine jet-black gabardine tunic and jodhpurs on a hanger in the closet next to Krennic's white cape. He watches her change, admiring the contour of her ass as she steps into a pair of linen trousers and a simple black regulation undershirt. She catches his saddened, grizzled eyes combing her for answers and permission. He doesn't want to abandon his books, the dreams he keeps at night when even Tarkin cannot threaten him, but he knows that Jyn is the key.

"I can see why he called you 'Stardust'."

"I'm sure he meant it in a different way, but I'll take the compliment."

He steps forward and wraps himself around her. It isn't a hug so much as a constriction, though Jyn is willing. It seems too desperate for Director Krennic, one of the most powerful men in the galaxy. It's beneath him.

She cups the back of his head and plays with the locks of silver white hair. "You've made your decision?"

"I spoke with your father yesterday. It's arranged."

Krennic steps back to look down at Jyn. Her lips part in the center just the way Galen's did whenever he was deep in thought; there is no trace of Lyra in her, save for the features that cannot be seen. She is left wanting when he brushes his lips against her forehead. "You can protect me far better than he ever did."

He stops, and the brushing of his lips becomes a kiss. "I knew that you had to be of the Empire or not at all. It was an easy decision."

"Do you really believe that the Empire will bring peace?"

Krennic looks up. He can make out the shape of a behemoth amid the clouds if he concentrates hard enough. Its foreboding promise, that someday this horizon could be kissed by its enormity and power, takes his breath away.

"Peace is a lie."

The kiss burns all the way to her womb.


	4. having and holding and then to release

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Director Orson Krennic and his wife, Lieutenant Erso-Krennic.

As she secures her officer's belt around her waist, the saber polished and hanging from its syntheleather frog, memories of her time spent on Alpinn slip into her pre-wedding jittered reverie. She'd been thinking about her mother, but the dig on the bright-white, phosphorous world had been the first time she'd ever been exposed to an argument between her mother and her father.

She'd been sitting on Krennic's lap playing with a stuffed stormtrooper, singing and making him dance. Krennic had been laughing, encouraging her childish game and then he'd lifted her up and taken her away from the shouting. Venomous accusations about what both of them really wanted; Lyra couldn't power a death machine and Galen just wanted to keep the peace and provide some sort of life for his daughter and how couldn't Lyra want that, too?

Now the man who held her and protected her on Alpinn was pledging to do the same thing, except the stakes were higher and Galen was aging and pliable and defeated; and Krennic had been consigned to a fate he didn't want. His heart was written in those ancient books he read at night above the sea.

An Imperial clerk officiated their small ceremony. Tarkin attended, as well as Commanders Piett and Thrawn, a Chiss whose eyes were scarlet and his voice was as smooth as the skin of an infant.

She kissed Orson Krennic in that drab cream colored administrative office; a conservative peck, and his blue eyes weren't icy for a brief moment in time. They retreated to the villa after collecting strained and forced well-wishes from Krennic's colleagues. They had been awarded one week of shore leave before reporting for their dual assignment.

He didn't dislike the sight of Jyn splayed before him on what was now their bed, toned legs arching upward to allow him, semi-hard, to enter her. Once he was surrounded by her, he forgot about his books. He forgot about the project, and about Tarkin. He needed to tell the Emperor, needed to tell him about Galen in his own words so that he wouldn't have his hand forced --

When he came, he shouted - a long, reverberating cry that you might hear from a caged animal. Even has his penis softened and the seed he spilled dried on her thighs, he was still imprisoned. He always would be.

He eventually forgot about Galen's sullen one-word answers over the com when he had let him know what Jyn had decided. And the defeat didn't stimulate his need for power as Tarkin had promised; rather it had somehow broken him in a way only Jyn could see. Everyone else just thought that he was being aloof and inaccessible; temperamental and hopelessly ambitious. No one saw how his hair ruffled and his eyes dropped their intense gaze when he was out of the uniform that defined him.

No one knew that Jyn was working for the Empire and against it at the same time after Mon Mothma contacted the most underrated Imperial couple to solicit their help in a plot to make the Death Star public galactic knowledge.

"If we fuck up Jedha, they can't hide it from the Senate. I can push Tarkin to action because he wants what I have right now, anyway."

It's a risk Jyn is willing to take for both of the men she loves.

"Tell me how."

"You'll be imprisoned on Wobani. No one will know but the Rebels sent to rescue you."

Krennic watches the transport leave and practices his stony indifference.


	5. we lose nothing but time

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The villa is quiet and empty.

He waits for his com to flash with a transmission from Yavin 4, knowing that it will come like the swift cut of an executioner's ax; without him having anticipated it, without warning, and perhaps heralding a confirmation other than what he wants - needs - to hear.

It has been four days since the transport took Jyn to Wobani. As though it were planned, his leave abruptly ended when Tarkin summoned him to oversee the final preparations before setting the superlaser edifice - the crowning achievement of the battle station. Schematic and mathematics scrolled across his vision until he had nearly forgotten about his wife on a prison planet, slogging through stormtroopers who wouldn't know who she was.

And then one evening, while he was sound asleep, his com vibrated wildly on the table next to his bed.

"Director", Mon Mothma's smooth alto called to him. "Good morning."

"Where is she?"

"Asleep and briefed. We're sending her to find Saw Gerrera in Jedha; we need Galen."

He wiped at his eyes. _Galen_.

"We need him dead."

"He already is. Just tell me where I need to go."

"Eadu", she says, her voice a node above a whisper, knowing that his old friend had sent him to his own death.

Krennic terminated the transmission, rolling out from under the scratchy wool of standard-issue bedclothes. He rubbed his already-irritated skin raw in the 'fresher, pulling and pushing the pumice stone against his skin until it split and bled, until the redness of his blood mingled with soap and tears and mist.

He dressed, and for the first time regarded the cape hanging in the closet. It was an accessory which would perfectly suit his contrived and carefully-constructed mien; he wanted to be impossibly temperamental, perhaps even feared. It showed that he thought he was some facsimile of Vader or perhaps even the Emperor - that his self-confidence and ambition knew no bounds.

And if he had to hide his grief over losing Galen and potentially Jyn by going to such great lengths, then so be it.

* * *

She hobbled, white hot pain blasting up her right leg like the canon fire of the TIE and X-Wing dogfight spinning above her head. The tower had to be realigned, and she had done so, but she had no idea if the mechanical health of the dish had been threatened with the firefights so close by. There wasn't an alternative, in any case.

Bodhi had died. She wasn't Force-sensitive as far as she knew, but she had felt his imprint wiped clean from the space between the fighting and the conflict. The ship was gone. There was no way out.

"Who are you?" He had emerged from behind the cover of a durasteel bulkhead, white uniform tattered and impossibly soiled. Jyn hadn't seen him since leaving for Wobani. She wanted to run, but the blinding sear of pain held her in place.

"You know who I am. You've always known."

"You're more like Galen than I could have ever anticipated. He would be - so very, very proud, my Jyn. My Jyn." His face contorted into a mask of pain, terror, and emotion. "They will hear us. They have to."

Cassian was dead, too. She felt the vibration of his passionate dedication fade from the breeze, still somehow peaceful, listlessly moving the palms many meters below them. They were all gone. Baze, Chirrut, Saw. Their dead Rebellion.

The shifting light as they descended the tower on the lift made Krennic's face look like the visage in a nightmare as he kept himself from weeping, twisting his lips and brow. Jyn reached up, her own hands shaking and bloodied, to quell the regret and the hatred pouring from his pores.

On the sand waited his transport, waited liberation. Death Troopers guarded the boarding platform, their scrambled commands oscillating Jyn's bones. Just like the day they took her father. She wondered briefly if they were the same men and women encased in that armor; wondered if they remembered her. If they remembered the angle of Lyra Erso's neck in that tall, tall grass.

"Oh, hells."

The monument, the final player, had fallen out of hyperspace and hung above Scarif in warning.

"We don't have time. We don't have time!" Orson picked up a staggering Jyn, motioning for his troopers to follow. No one spoke, everyone knew that this was the curtain on their play.

Right before they jumped to lightspeed, Krennic chanced a glance from the viewport. Unlike Jedha, it wasn't beautiful. He vomits, bile coating the black matte floor of the transport.

Jyn kills all of them, even the pilot; even in her weakened state. It's only them and their treason, and their labored breathing and their silent apologies.

"This was Tarkin's machination. He saw a window and knew to climb through it. I can't hold that against him; it's the Imperial way."

"We can't go back." Jyn realizes it as the words tumble from her bruised lips. "My whole life I've not been able to choose which side of the line I wanted. It all leads to death. Does it matter? We can't go back."

She takes the shoulders of the dead pilot, using her remaining strength to shove him onto the floor of the cockpit behind the pilot's chair. She wails and beats on the onyx chest, rips off the helmet and throws it across the passenger bay. Orson holds her, because it's all he can bring himself to do.

Beneath them, Scarif lights up and its tomb is sealed. When they jump to lightspeed, they leave what makes them creatures of regret and flesh in endless space, behind and between the Y-Wings and TIEs exploding like the stars just beyond them. It's not over - Jyn imagines that they could run to the Unknown Regions and they'd be hounded to the edge of where known space meets vacuous eternity - but it's enough. Someone heard them. They hear each other around, within, and through the veil.


End file.
